


Some Kind of Hero Complex

by trimethylxanthine



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/F, Gen, Magic and Science, Post-Canon, Post-Chosen, Rating May Change, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Virtual Season/Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trimethylxanthine/pseuds/trimethylxanthine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy decided she was never going to indulge Willow’s curiosity again. Ever. Especially if it involved purple rays of death that ripped through six different dimensions and the World Without Shrimp.</p><p>("THERE IS AN ANGRY LADY WHO CAN THROW FIRE CHASING US. <i>WHAT KIND OF HELL DIMENSION DID YOU SEND US TO."</i><br/>"This isn't a hell dimension! Look, the sky is blue! There are green trees that look like inverted umbrellas! There are multicolored flowers that are...that are turning into butterflies...and, and...oh my goddess, are those walking vegetables?"<br/><i>"HELL. DIMENSION."</i><br/>"Actually, I think that they look kinda cute. I've always liked Hayao Miyazaki.")</p><p>Book 5 Korrasami/post-"Chosen" Buffy-and-Willow, feat. accidental interruptions of Spirit World vacations, awkward interdimensional hopping, politicians making asses of themselves, and an impending clash between technology, magic, and spirits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fall

**Division I: Spirits**

**Part 1**

[ **Fall**  ]

* * *

Buffy sometimes thought that it was far beyond the scope of human imagination how long Willow had spent her life in school without going even a little bit insane. What had started out of necessity for their line of work — magic and science were a hairsbreadth apart if you looked at things from the right angle — had become something of a passion, prompting her to go so far as to obtain multiple degrees in related fields. Willow kept all of her certifications stacked up in a two-inch tall pile in her room (and that was when they were out of their frames) rather than hang them up in her office/research lab/computer haven and end up intimidating everyone with its sheer amount of officialness. _Where_  exactly she'd found all the time to deal with her Ph.D theses and god-awful lab work in the middle of heading the Watchers Council's R&D department, the Slayer had no idea. No one who wasn't using dark magicks could possibly handle that large a workload in a single twenty-four hour day. Their heads would've exploded.

Willow's head was clearly the sole exception to that rule, though, because it was decidedly intact and non-explody. And it wasn't that Buffy was implying that Willow was back on magicks of the veiny black-eyed variety, but still, the amount of academic _stuff_  the redhead managed to complete since they were eighteen was just downright...well, _demonic._

Anyway, given all of this and all that they'd been through for the past, it was safe to say that Buffy trusted her best friend to not make any mistakes, at least when it came to her field...fields...of expertise.

Unfortunately, Willow (usually) not making any mistakes only served to highlight the times when she did.

The biggest started with a heavily-procrastinated-on European History paper and leftover Chinese takeout.

 

"...Come on..."

Buffy intently glared at the page in front of her as if hoping that the sheer power of her glower would cow it into revealing whatever secrets laid in its pixelated depths.

The blank Word document remained exactly that: a blank Word document. Clippy blinked innocently up at her from the corner. Willow thought that he was the ugliest thing that she'd ever seen, and kept on trying to get Buffy to upgrade to Word 2007 — "or even better, just get rid of that PC; I think a nice and new and white Macbook is in order" — but the Slayer liked her own little personal cheerleader when she was plodding through history and English and science essays. Willow had teasingly rolled her eyes when Buffy mentioned this before turning back to her nice and new and white Macbook, muttering something about RAM space differences and processing power under her breath. Not that Buffy understood any of it, but that was probably for the best.

Her brief moment of introspection, unfortunately, did not translate to any words on the doc.

_Alright, then._

She stared irritably at the Word document some more, silently willing the words "Buffy Summers, European History 203" to suddenly begin breeding wildly, filling the page with line upon line of text.

Clippy blinked some more at her and twitched to the right.

...Fine, Willow was right. Buffy had never wanted to murder a virtual paperclip any more in her life.

> _Buffy Summers_
> 
> _European History 203_
> 
> _Queen of the omelettes, princess of late-night karaoke, and duchess of slaying creepy-crawlies that go bump in the night._

Sighing, Buffy held her finger over the Backspace key until the words disappeared. She probably couldn't submit that, even if her assignment was to analyze facts. The prof would probably laugh for all of five seconds and then fail her ass. No way she could afford to get her ass failed.

Except now, she was frustrated. Officially. She double-clicked on her iTunes "Thinking Music" playlist and brooded.

"Ya know," and Willow's voice floated over from somewhere to Buffy's far left, "I allowed you to stay here 'cause for one, you said that Dawn was havin' a party or something back at your house and you didn't want to see the resulting carnage and the library was closed, and two, because you also said you would be working on a paper you procrastinated on that was due tomorrow" — checking the time — "er, _today,_ and instead you've been making grumpy faces at Clippy the entire night." She paused to (finally) suck in a breath, and then asked, "What's up? I mean, I  _told_ you to upgrade —"

"Ugh. It's not necessarily Clippy I don't like; it's this stupid paper." Buffy popped an earbud out and spun around to face Willow. There was a look of incredulity worn by indignant college students everywhere plain on her expression. "I'm a criminal justice major! Why do I need to 'analyze the lasting effects of the French Revolution and its influences/influence-ees...' I mean, 'what it influenced...'"

There was a moment of silence.

"American Idiot" began blasting out of the earbud. Willow snickered as Buffy stuck her tongue out at the screen.

"Well, take heart in the knowledge that I totally and one hundred percent agree with everything you just said," said Willow seriously, composing herself. She steepled her fingers together and, if not for the smile she was still working hard to stifle, would have looked like some diabolical genius attempting to take over the world. "The American education system is going to the dogs and it must be stopped at all costs."

 _"Will."_ Buffy poked her textbook and pouted. "C'mon, we're best friends. You've got a Masters in history, don't you? That means you know all about the French Revolution and you know all about helping me! Remember helping me? With the French back in high school? We could do that again. For the old time's sake!"

Willow was back-lit by a literal wall of monitors. The screens on the top few rows were angled slightly downward. All were displaying impossibly complex graphs and statistical readings and Buffy didn't even know. The eerie blue glow highlighted the passably sympathetic expression the redhead had arranged on her face.

"You mean the time when you told me that the cow should touch you from Thursday?"

 _Okay, bribery it is._  "I'll buy your mochas for the rest of the week. Starbucks. Venti."

She perked up, smiling brightly. "I suppose that you're well-aware that you're subjecting everyone in this department to the horrors of this heavily-caffeinated brain?" She tapped her own head.

Buffy grimaced, well-aware of the carnage that tended to occur when the witch ingested copious amounts of trimethylxanthine. "Yep."

"You do pose a very convincing argument. Two weeks?"

"Alright." Buffy rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Just...'splainy. Please?" She blinked, and then sighed. "Jeez, I feel like my brain's been blowtorched and then stampeded over by a horde of small fire-breathing leprechauns."

"Um, leprechauns don't breathe fire. Y'know, they actually don't hoard gold, either..."

"Whatever. How did you do this for the past decade?!"

Willow bounced to her feet, the ends of her lab coat crimping around her legs. "Still doin' it! I've almost finished my theoretical physics thesis. Einstein-Rosen bridges are the best; it even has part of my last name in it! 'Cause, you know. 'Rosen'? And then there's feasibility of there being enough of some kind of this cosmic energy to tear through six different dimensions and The World Without Shrimp!" She looked sheepish for a moment. "That's relative, I mean. It could open up a gateway through one, or one thousand; not just six. And not that, uh, not that that would be a good thing. B-But, this isn't about me, it's about you! You said French Revolution?"

Buffy had not followed Willow's ramble prior to the words _French Revolution_  at all. "Uh huh."

She yanked up a chair next to Buffy, pulling the laptop from her friend's lap and onto her own. Pausing, she looked at the exhausted Slayer up and down before patting her on the shoulder. "Someone's lookin' a bit peachy over there. You okay, Buff?"

"Never been better."

Willow was quiet for a moment. "Uh, there's some leftover takeout in the fridge. Chinese. You can warm it up in the microwave if you want. I'll churn out a list of effects while you're at it, and you can go from there."

Buffy smiled gratefully at the redhead, crossing over to the mini-fridge. "Thanks, Will."

"Don't mention it. If there's one thing I've learned in all my years spent immersed in higher education, it's that y'can't discuss reigns of terror involving a madman who liked to decapitate innocent people on an empty stomach."

"...And who might this madman be?" Buffy tossed the carton into the microwave and shut the door.

"A one Mr. Robespierre." The sounds of furious typing drifted across the room, although it was barely audible over the low hum of the microwave. "Actually, there's this bust of him that kinda looks like Benedict Cumberbatch."

"What?"

The microwave beeped, and Buffy took the carton back to her chair, plopping down next to Willow. She was about to look over at this supposedly Benedict-Cumberbatch–esque bust when she blinked, looked back down at the steaming Chinese takeout, and then turned incredulously toward Willow, who seemed blissfully unaware of the transgression she had made concerning her food.

"...Is there...you're not keeping kosher?"

"It's pork, if that's what you mean. You like?"

"Willow!" Buffy smirked, flicking a grain of rice at the redhead before digging in with her chopsticks.

Willow didn't take her gaze off from the computer. "Hey! I'm doing your homework."

"You offered to..."

"I took a bribe that involved chocolate-y coffee goodness. It was nothing that noble."

Her nose twitched.

"...J-Just don't tell my father, okay?"

Buffy nodded, munching on an enormous mouthful of rice. "Okephay." She swallowed. "I mean. Okay."

"I got it," Willow said. "Say, isn't this pa —"

But Buffy would never find out what the "pa-" was, because one of Willow's monitors began beeping up a storm. Willow almost threw Buffy's laptop onto the floor with her surprised jolt and, sheepishly passing it back off to a scandalized Slayer, she all but sprinted over to her work station, scattering what were quite possibly Very Important Papers everywhere. After ensuring the safety of her laptop, Buffy stared at the storm of white, text-filled sheets floating gently to the ground before shrugging, digging back into the rice while Willow dealt with...whatever had caused the insane alert.

She watched the redhead for the next couple of minutes, still munching away at the food. Willow was visibly growing more and more agitated, her fingers flying over a keyboard — several different keyboards, in fact — until she reached for her cellphone to make a call. (Actually, it was more like she didn't take her eyes off of whichever screen held her attention for the moment as she randomly palmed her desk looking for the iPhone, almost knocking it off the table in her rush.)

Buffy watched her, intrigued, as whoever Willow appeared to be calling finally picked up.

"Hello?"

_"..."_

"No, I was just wondering if you — there was a burst of EM radiation near the Henan province. Couple of hours from Beijing —"

_"..."_

"Wh-Whaddya mean, you didn't see it?!" She was out of her seat in an instant, snatching her Macbook. It balanced precariously on the tips of her fingers and Buffy didn't know whether to laugh her head off or act scandalized that Willow was treating her so-called "light of my life" with such perfunctory carelessness. "It nearly blew out all my sensors! And my sensors can handle quite a bit, thank you very much!"

_"..."_

"Rash?" She was in an absolute tizzy now, turning the Macbook around so that the camera was straight in front of one of the furiously blinking monitors. I'm not being rash! It's right there in all its datafied glory! Look!"

_"..."_

"I don't —  _aurora don't appear that far away from the poles!"_

_"..."_

"...Did you just call me an _amateur?"_

Whatever the person on the other line said in response to that, Willow looked like she was about to throttle someone. Either that, or go all dark magicky again on whatever poor soul was talking to her, and Buffy could confidently say that she wanted neither of the possible results to happen. Setting aside her takeout, she crossed over to the trembling redhead and plucked the phone from her fingers.

"Sorry. Will's about to blow a hole in her wall. Who is this?"

Too late, the person on the other end had already hung up.

Buffy turned to Willow, who was still staring at her cellphone like she wanted it to burn up into tens of millions of fiery flames. Removing it from the witch's line of sight to prevent just that from happening, Buffy promptly pulled up a chair next to her and patted her on the back.

"I can give you the rest of the takeout?"

"They called me an  _amateur!_ The last person to call me that ended up with a head wound and two inches away from death! And that was a really tasteless joke, but —" Willow erupted.  _"Who do they think they are?!"_

"Will? Will, calm down. I agree with you a hundred percent about that. Except you might, um, also want to tell me what I'm agreeing with you about."

Willow took several fortifying breaths.

"Stupid evil lawyer buttheads," she grumbled, putting her head in her hands. "Y'know what? I don't care what Wolfram and Hart says. They're — they're just — so —  _lawyery!"_ _  
_

"They're lawyers," Buffy said helpfully. "That's kind of their job. To be lawyery...and stuff..."

"Exactly!" Willow jabbed her finger down onto the surface of her desk and immediately recoiled, shaking it like it had been burned. "Owowow _ow_  — ...okay, remind me not to do that again — but  _exactly!_ They're lawyers! They have no right to call themselves people who engage in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge! And that's what I'm doing!" She waved her hands at the monitor-wall again, seemingly desperate to convince Buffy of her argument. "They're all relevant, just look at the data! Bet that  _they_ don't have it." She whirled around, pointing at the utterly incomprehensible wall of graphs and numbers. "There was just an unidentified EM pulse registered at an area in China. A supposedly  _empty_ place in China. Anyway, Wolfram and Hart keep on telling me that there was nothing magical about it and that it was a 'natural phenomenon' 'cause of a bunch of lightning storms and aurora that were present at that area, too. But lightning strikes don't cause EM pulses of that magnitude and _aurora don't appear that far away from the poles!"_  Willow deflated for a moment, slumping in her chair. "I-I mean,  _any_ respectable person who calls herself a scientist would know that. Right?"

She looked pleadingly at Buffy, who sensed that there was one correct answer to this question and that was spelled Y-E-S.

"Yeah. Right," she said soothingly. "But why so agitated?"

"I-I want to go investigate," was all Willow would say. She looked pale and withdrawn. "It's just, nothing — and I mean  _nothing_  — of this magnitude has ever been recorded. It shouldn't even be physically possible. But apparently, I'm 'not authorized to send a team at this time,' just 'cause some evil law firm's technology is too outdated to keep up with the mo —"

"Will, I love you, and you're going to give yourself an aneurysm if you keep on running this hot," Buffy said firmly. "And aneurysm-y Willow is bad."

"...Fine, you know what? They won't let me send an investigative team, I'm teleporting over there." She scowled, but then turned on Buffy. There was a pleading gleam in her eyes. "Will you come with me?"

She blinked. "I —"

"Buffy," she hastily interrupted. "Look, I promise I'll explain everything on the way. Long story short, the fact that the energy is even here and it obviously didn't come from any terrestrial source, or even NEOs — there's this whole theory about multiverses and whatnot, but the fact is that breaking down the barriers between different universes isn't a good thing at _all,_ if you remember Glory for instance. And I assume that the energy source of these pulses originated from another universe, and I just —"

"Hey." Buffy stood up, wrapping her arms around her friend's shoulders. "Look, I wasn't going to say no. If this means so much to you, then I'll come. That was never even a question. That's what best friends are for, right?" She grinned. "'Sides, we haven't done any Scooby missions lately, have we?"

"We have not," Willow agreed, the tension set visibly in her shoulders relaxing. "I...thanks." She grinned, almost a little sheepishly. "I mean, if we can find out the cause of whatever caused these energy waves, I may be able to substantiate my thesis with it! It'll definitely make it easier to defend." She grimaced a little bit. "Goddess, speaking in front of panels of old men who are staring at you and wanting you to fail with every word you say is pretty stressy."

"I can only imagine. This is why I'm never getting a Ph.D." Buffy smiled crookedly and grasped Willow's hand. "So, um...how are we going to do this?"

A second and a popping sound later, they were gone.

 

Apparently, the empty parts of China weren't exactly empty.

There was always a sense of disorientation when anyone teleported, and although Willow had told her that she'd get used to it with time, the fact remained that Buffy still thought that she was hallucinating when she saw the multicolored... _whatever-the-hell_ they were, and then almost fell back on her butt because of it.

"What...the hell are those things?!"

They had materialized in the middle of a grassy enclosure. The ground was wet with heavy droplets of dew, but the sky above was clear and bright with stars, brighter than any Buffy had ever seen in her life. They were practically blazing in the sky, like tiny pinpricks of miniature suns. There were strange... _things_ around them, too; things that could very well be demons, but unlike any Buffy had ever seen before. There was a trio of odd little fuzzballs with long and impossibly thin legs leaping across the ground, making chittering noises. A closer look at the glowing mushrooms revealed that they had, well, mouths. Semi-transparent, jellyfish-like creatures floated lazily through the air.

But her Slayer senses, while tingling like crazy, weren't exactly getting any dark vibes off of _any_ of them.

Fascinated, she walked up to one of the mushrooms, leaning down and gently prodding the cap. It was fairly squishy, like touching a normal mushroom cap was like, and —

"停啊, 停啊! 發癢!" the mushroom exclaimed. Buffy let out a very un-Slayer–like yelp and stumbled backwards, landing painfully on her butt on the ground.

"W-Willow, that mushroom just talked!" She hesitated, climbing back to her feet. The mushroom was silent again. "Actually, I think that it spoke in its own mushroom language...that makes sense, right?"

No response.

Willow still hadn't answered her earlier question either, and Buffy chanced a quick look over her shoulder, growing worried. She was still as stone, both hands feeling what appeared to be thin air, like she was trying to...sense something. Something magical, probably, given that pale streaks of white stood out against the red of her hair. Buffy had long since learned that the witch's hair was pretty much a color-coded barometer of her magical intentions, so she left Willow alone for the while, still trying to figure out what a grassy clearing full of talking mushrooms was doing in what Willow had described as an "empty part of China."

Turning around, Buffy realized that beyond the clearing, they were in the middle of some kind of sparsely populated forest. There were oddly-shaped trees all around them, of a variety of different cool palette colors — all blue and purple shades. She could hear a frog gently croaking in the distance — or what sounded like a frog, at least; with this place housing chirping fuzzballs and talking mushrooms, Buffy wasn't sure _what_ kind of things even lived here — and rustles in the branches above told her that there was obviously some kind of nightlife residing among the leaves.

"Will," she said, slowly and deliberately, "we are _not_ in an empty part of China."

"I'm...yeah. Yeah, I kinda got that," Willow responded. There were beads of sweat on her brow now, and she dropped her arm, opening her eyes. Her hair had melted back into a uniform rusty red color, but she looked incredibly frustrated. "I — I can't get a read on this place! There's just _so much_ going on that every time I try, I feel like my brain's about to explode from sensory overload, and exploding brains are not a good thing! Especially mine!" She dropped to the ground with a pout, slinging her crossed forearms over her knees. Then, looking at Buffy, "Buff, can you try and pull out the scythe here?"

Willow had enchanted the Slayer scythe with a neat little spell of her own invention so that Buffy or Faith or any of the senior Slayers, really, could pull it out of thin air whenever they needed it. Magically, it was contained in some pocket that was made out of folded air or something that followed them around wherever it went. Buffy didn't really understand the magic behind it, or how different air pockets containing the single same scythe could be used by different...okay, whatever, it wasn't as if she had to understand it to use it. It'd always worked when she needed it, unless another Slayer was using the scythe.

Concentrating, Buffy felt around for the pocket before finding it and flipping it open, reaching inside the enchanted air. After rummaging around for a few seconds, she felt her hands close around a leather-wrapped handle and then pulled the weapon out.

"Looks fine to me," Buffy said, inspecting the silver blade. It looked as sharp as ever. She hefted it over her shoulder and explained, "We don't know what we're going to run into here. Might as well keep it out. I mean, I don't think that there's an apocalypse happening right now, back where we were."

"That's a good idea," Willow sighed. She rubbed her eyes, slumping. "Argh...my teleportation's never gone off all funky like that," she confessed. "There must have been some lingering residual energy interfering with the destina...wait a minute..." Willow's eyes widened, and she shot to her feet. "Residual energy — Buffy, I think that I know where we are."

"Really? What's this place called? 'Cause it's giving me some seriously weird vibes."

"Yeah, I know, right? And you're sensing them, and you're not even that magically inclined! ...'Sides the obvious Slayer-y stuff." She gestured vaguely at the scythe. "Well, I don't know what it's called; I can't give you a name or anything like that. But I think that we're in the place where that energy blast originated in." She paused, and then split into a wide smile. "Hey, the subject of my thesis's been proven! ...Okay, not really, but still!"

"...What?" Buffy was stunned, hung up on Willow's previous statement. "'The place where that energy blast originated in'? You mean...the one in a different universe?"

Willow suddenly looked sheepish. "Oh. Uh, I didn't think of it that way, but...yeah."

_"You teleported us into a different universe?!"_

"I...guess? Maybe?"

"...I am  _not_ buying you your mochas."

"Fair enough." Willow sighed, her expression one of genuine moroseness, before she took a look around herself. "I mean, I don't think that there are any mochas here..."

"The mushrooms can talk," Buffy advised, pointing unhelpfully at the mushrooms, although she was still a little peeved by the whole _we-were-just-teleported-into-an-alternate-dimension_ thing.

"你好, 外國人," said the mushroom with a smile. "請問你們在做什麼?"

Willow's eyebrows shot up into her hairline. "Uh...we should probably try and figure what's going on here, and then find out a way to get out and go back home."

"No kidding!" Buffy had her cellphone out now and was glaring at the screen. "There's no service here!"

"We're kinda in a different universe, as you so kindly pointed out," Willow chuckled. "C'mon, Buffy. Let's go. And don't touch anything else!"

Buffy's hand froze a millimeter away from a leaf before she sheepishly lowered her hand, scrambling after Willow to venture into the unknown.

"再見!" the mushroom called after them.

"Oh my goddess," Willow muttered.

"You don't say." Buffy paused and then looked at what seemed to be miles of foliage ahead of them. "...This is going to be a long...long...trip."


	2. Lost

**Division I: Spirits**

**Part 2**

[ **Lost**  ]

* * *

The next couple of hours passed without incident. “Without incident,” of course, had temporarily gained the definition of _Buffy ran into no more talking fungi._

God, she was never going to get that chatty mushroom out of her head for as long as she lived. Never. She didn’t know about Willow, who had only looked mildly surprised by the entire affair anyway (Buffy still couldn’t make heads or tails about how she was so _calm)_ , but that encounter had given her a serious case of the wiggins. Mushrooms were meant to be eaten on top of pizzas, not hold a conversation with a partly-baffled, partly-appalled vampire Slayer. And Buffy didn’t think that she would ever be able to eat anything in with mushrooms in them ever again.

Which was a pity, because she happened to love Portobello burgers.

It was kind of pathetic, really, Buffy thought as she glared at what seemed to be a sunny yellow hedgehog, if hedgehogs were three feet tall and looked like they were also inbreeded with a particularly spiny pinecone. She could handle vampires. Trolls. Demons. Friggin’ Turok-Hans, what say you, things that go bump in the night with no problem. At least they did what they were supposed to do and tried to kill things.

Mushrooms, on the other hand, were _not_ supposed to talk.

“Buff? You’ve got your broody face on,” said Willow, her voice breaking through the Slayer’s reverie. She picked her way over an especially gnarly tree root and caught up to Buffy. There was an expression of mild concern on her face. “You wanna talk about it?”

“We got drop-kicked us into an alternate dimension with talking mushrooms,” the Slayer weakly said. “An image that I will now never be able to get out of my head. I — I liked mushrooms! And now I can’t ever eat one again in good conscience.”

Willow looked somewhat lost. “You…can’t eat mushrooms because you met a talking mushroom?”

“Yes! How can you _not_ be wigged out by that?”

Her friend only grimaced. “I...well, let’s just say that I’ve run into my fair share of mystical creatures. Hey, d’you remember that time when you destroyed the Seed and removed all magic from the Earth?”

Twilight was not something that Buffy really wanted to discuss or drag up from the dark pits of her retention to recall. “I’ve been trying to bury those memories for the past couple of years, but sure. Why?” She hesitated. “Did it have something to do with your fixing the scythe after it was broken?” She gestured toward the weapon in her fingers.

“Actually, yes. Ah...there may or may not have been a sexy snake woman and cute baby octopi that didn’t actually turn out to be so cute involved.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then added, “Also, I got turned into a frog.”

“...You hate frogs.”

“Well, at least, there were gills and eyes and I think webbed hands and feet.” She thought for a moment, and then shuddered. “Never mind. You’re right. I will never do that again, even if it was cool to breathe underwater like that.”

“Okay, fine. But talking plants?!”

The witch looked thoughtful for a moment, and then gave an unworried shrug of her shoulders. “Well, I guess you’ve got a point there.” She smiled sympathetically. “Buff, they’re just talking mushrooms. Nothin’ to get too wigged out over, ’kay?”

They waded through the undergrowth for some time, trying to avoid stepping on creatures that were growing to look more and more peculiar. By the time they had broken through the line of trees, however, the grass had receded to a grayish-blue stone, with sharp pebbles littering the ground. There was a thin mist permeating the air, clinging to the folds of Buffy's clothes as she walked before the fog melted away. The air smelled fresh, probably from the proximity of the scraggly forest — which looked more like a tiny grove backed by sharp mountain peaks now that they were out of it — but there was also another scent in the air, one that Buffy couldn't identify. She slowed her gait down, attempting to identify it.

_Smells like...like...power?_

And alright, that didn’t even make any sense. Buffy shook her unease of and merely tightened her grip on the scythe. It cheerfully hummed beneath her fingers, and she couldn’t help but let out a brief sigh of relief at the familiarity.

There still appeared to be nothing for miles, and the ground was growing increasingly treacherous underfoot. Given that they _were_ hiking on what seemed to be a large mountain range, Buffy supposed that that was only to be expected, what with loose rocks spilling over the edges of ravines and almost no walkable trail to speak of. But knowing that didn’t make experiencing it any better.

As they picked their way carefully across the rock, Willow — who was in the lead — stopped maybe fifty minutes in without warning, clutching onto the wall for dear life as she peered over the ravine. Buffy almost slammed into her, and they both scrabbled for handholds for a few terrifying seconds as more loose rocks tumbled down the cliff.

They didn’t hear them hit the ground.

Willow’s back was now pressed flat against the rock cliff behind her in an effort to keep herself from making a misstep and going _splat_ on what Buffy supposed was a very long fall to the ground. Buffy did the same, squeezing herself up to the rough stone behind her. She had no desire to become the world’s first Slayer pancake in a world that wasn’t even her own. Given that neither her nor Willow knew the nature of how magic worked in this strange world, and Willow had yet to explain in full what had gotten her so agitated in the first place, the redhead had explained earlier that she wasn’t sure that any spell cast wouldn’t go all bizzaro on them, especially since she couldn’t even get a good read on the place without almost falling over.

“I mean, we know that you can pull out the scythe, but that was precast magic,” Willow had explained when they were climbing. “It’s static. Doesn’t give off energy or take energy. So, y’know, no laws of the universe are being broken. I don’t know how doing any new magic will affect this place, especially since we aren’t in the same universe as we were…” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wait a sec, does that mean that this universe has different laws than ours do?”

“Willow!” Buffy gestured toward the more pressing problem. Like, the one where they were standing on a foot-wide ledge suspended who knows how many feet in the air. “And, uh, might wanna explain why you stopped?”

“I’m sorry!” Willow responded in present time, throwing a contrite look at the Slayer. “But —look! I mean, it’s a little bit foggy, but over there.”

Buffy followed the line of Willow’s arm, which the witch quickly retracted again as soon as she turned. Peering over the ravine, she could make out the shapes of what seemed to be...

“...People?”

There were two of them, moving near the base of the mountain, apparently doing something to the stone. There was another couple of more massive shapes behind them, and one seemed to be passing something off to the other, who would then carry it back to the hulking shadows before returning for more.

“There are people in this world? Oh my god, Will, that’s great! We have to get down there —”

“Whoa, hold on!” Willow shook her head as emphatically as she could. “I — I’m all excito gal here, too, but what’re ya gonna do; jump and hope that you don’t break every bone in your body and then some? Even you can’t survive a jump that steep without some serious injuries. And I — I don’t think that it’s just _people_ down there. I mean, I can’t make them out, but what’re those things behind them?”

Buffy took another look, squinting. Even with her Slayer vision, she could only make out some of the features of the “things” Willow had been referring to.

“Alright, so they’ve got like...trucks or something. At least, I think that they’re trucks.” She turned back. “So what? There are people who build trucks. We have people who build trucks, too. Nice, non-mushroomy people who build trucks.”

Willow looked unconvinced. “But...why are they snooping around at the base of a _mountain_ and putting whatever they found in trucks? They harvesting rocks or somethin’?”

“The people in this world could be weird,” Buffy argued. “Rocks could be their fuel, or their food, or — or something! They could be rare collectibles! Oh, they could make their clothes out of rocks!” She paused. “...Okay. That sounded a _lot_ more reassuring in my head.”

Willow carefully sat down and then swung her legs of the ledge, sending several more pebbles flying down to their demise. She picked one up and inspected it, turning it over her fingers.

“It’s turquoise,” she said. She looked around. “Well, some are like this turquoise-y color, and others are violet.” She tossed the pebble she was holding to the side and stood up, cautiously brushing the remaining dust off of her pants. “They’re just multicolored pebbles. And I, um, think we should move on.”

“But Will! People!”

“Buff, we walked up this way for nearly an hour,” Willow said wearily. And when Buffy looked back at her, she did seem pretty breathless, with her hair and clothes in a disarray. “Not everyone has Slayer stamina, and I think that we’re almost to the peak, anyway. I, for one, don’t want to make the hour-long trip back down and then misstep halfway through and then decorate the ground below with my splattered brains and viscera. It’s pretty slippery with all the loose rocks up here. Going down is probably as hard as going up.”

Buffy pouted, but finally acquiesced. “Fine. Lead the way, Elphaba.”

Willow visibly rolled her eyes, but started trekking up once more.

They finally climbed up to what seemed to be the peak of one of the mountains, into some kind of outcropping. Willow almost immediately staggered to her knees, panting heavily. Buffy, meanwhile, walked a little bit ahead to survey their surroundings.

They were overlooking a vast turquoise-colored field, the rocks about the same color as the mountains they were on now. In fact, the entire area seemed to be surrounded by turquoise mountains, although they were extremely lopsided. Above, the sky burned a pinkish-orange color, several wisps of clouds chasing each other around, although there seemed to be no sun or...any source of light, really, to speak of. Down below, however, was a way more interesting story.

Small, spiny crests of rock swept out through the entire area, and they all seemed to spiral toward one of two glowing beams of light that stretched up into the air. They were both so tall that Buffy couldn't tell where they ended, even from where she was standing. One of the beams was a reddish-orange, and the other a cool blue. They looked a little bit like DNA helices, if she stretched her imagination. At the center point of the two helices, there sat an _extremely_ gnarled tree, with twisted branches that jutted out in odd directions, kind of like the hair of a mad scientist might look if he stuck his hands into electric sockets for fun. It had no leaves, though. It was rather short and stout for such an old-looking thing.

“Gosh, that tree has even more wrinkles than my grandfather does,” Willow observed from behind her. Heavy footsteps clomped onto the ground and the witch limped up next to Buffy, her hands planted firmly on her hips. “Whew, that was a long climb.”

“You don’t say.”

“Hmm, yeah.” She turned her attention back to the tree. “I mean, sure, Grandpa’s only about ninety-two and that tree’s probably a _lot_ older than ninety-two given how thick the trunk looks, but still — _yeesh.”_ She looked impressed, if still rather winded. Her chest was heaving and there were streaks of colored dust on her hands and glowing red cheeks, and her hair stuck to her skin with sweat. In comparison, Buffy, although similarly dusty, appeared extremely well put-together.

“The tree’s nice and all,” Buffy agreed, “but I’m guessing that those DNA things are a lot more than swirly beams of pretty light. What are those?”

“No idea.” Willow sat down heavily, crossing her legs before leaning on them with her arms. “They could be portals, or something? They seem to be emanating from those small...hill-thingies” — nodding at the slopes of rock that cushioned the sides of the light beams’ bases — “so maybe there’s something underneath there.”

Buffy plopped down right next to her. “Do they have anything to do with the things you detected in China?”

“Maybe. I can’t tell you for sure. Need to run a coupla tests to do that, and clearly, we don’t have the necessary equipment.”

“Speaking of which, you have yet to explain to me how those things interfering with your teleportation spell even works.”

Willow shrugged, a self-deprecating smile lifting the corners of her lips. “I’m really sorry about that. I should’ve known better than to do it.” Her voice dropped a little at the end.

“You _were_ a bit hysterical back there.”

“I was running on hot air,” she said. “I just — this was so out of the _blue,_ and it shouldn’t have even been _possible,_ and my interest was just piqued and LA was just denying that anything happened and —”

“They’re a bunch of dunderheads,” Buffy grinned.

Willow smiled a little at that as well. “Well, if you don’t mind me going on a long-winded spiel...”

Buffy looked down at the swirling beams of light and the gnarled tree. “I think we’ve got some time.”

“Well...the thing you gotta understand first is energy,” Willow said slowly. “Magic is just another form of energy. You draw on a source, whether that be from yourself or from nature, and then you mold that energy to do your bidding. Some people have more of this magical energy in them than others, but it’s all the same with the whole source thing. Because energy can’t be created or destroyed — it can only be changed. That’s the basic law of conservation. It’s the same thing with mass.” Her hands tightened on her knees and her eyes turned oddly distant for a moment. “Basically...y-you’ve got to give some to get some. That’s what magic is all about: it’s a series of checks and balances. For every push, there’s a pull, and you have to be really careful with how much you put into or receive something. Otherwise, you’ll just get worn out, or get overwhelmed.

“Transmutation circles, incantations and whatnot — those are just conduits to help you do that. They help you channel your energy. You don’t _need_ them, but they make things a hell of a lot easier. There’s a lot less strain. L-Like, transmutation circles are kind of miniature representations of the way specific energies flow through the Earth. They all start with a circle — ’cause, you know, it’s even got the word ‘circle’ in it — because it’s kind of supposed to be like a 2-D representation of the Earth itself. And the lines you draw inside of it, that’s the way the type of magic, the type of energy you want to use flows through the ground.

“But since magic is really specific and picky about that kind of stuff, just one change in a line or a word can alter the intent of the whole spell. You could want to summon a helpful ball of sunlight and instead summon a troll, because of a single change in your wording.” She suddenly stifled a giggle. “That’s actually what happened that time when I accidentally summoned Anya’s troll ex-boyfriend” — at the look on Buffy’s expression, she backpedaled — “okay, fine; that’s not important. Uh...basically, magic’s really sensitive. And when I did that teleportation spell, for all intents and purposes there was supposed to be no magical interference running on either end — our starting point and our destination. Teleportation requires an anchor on both focal points, and whatever lingering traces of energy were at our destination, which was _supposed_ to be an empty place in China, they decided to run interference with the energy of the spell itself, and then _boom!_ Spell redirected. Talking mushrooms galore.”

“And that...interfere-y energy,” Buffy said slowly, “that came from _this_ place?”

Willow looked at her oddly. “Uh, yeah. Didn’t we clear that up already?”

“Diiid the energy look anything like that?”

The witch whirled around.

On the ground near one of the two light beams were a series of trucks — which looked kind of old-fashioned, now that there wasn’t any fog to blur their features — presumably belonging to the people Willow had pointed out before. After all, the vehicles were packed to the brim with what seemed to be stones from the mountain. They were already roaring into the blue helix and, when they crossed it, were enveloped by a flash of golden light. They didn’t come out from the other side. The rocks in their trunks, though, looked like they were glowing a purplish color as soon as they touched the light, but Buffy couldn’t tell for sure — they’d gone too quickly for her to draw a definite conclusion.

“What, like the gold light? The energy readings are kinda colorless...they were just EM pulses by the time they were detected...” She suddenly frowned and leaned forward. “Hey, wait a sec...”

“Well, not really _gold_ light —”

“...Those _are_ portals,” Willow muttered from besides her, studiously ignoring what Buffy was saying. The Slayer huffed and folded her arms. “Huh. I was right.” Clearly, she hadn’t seemed to notice the strange way the rocks shone when they hit the light.

Buffy tilted her head. “Are they portals back to our world?”

“I — I don’t think so,” Willow said distractedly.

“Then they’re non-useful portals,” she pouted.

Despite her apparent exhaustion, Willow jumped to her feet and began to pace, her head snapping back and forth from the red light to the blue. “’Cause the specific signature from the EM traces in China implied the whole alternate dimension thing, having appeared literally out of nowhere. You couldn’t trace back where it came from. And you can’t open portals that lead from a dimension in your own universe to another dimension in a separate universe. Unless you want to boundaries between those two universes to collapse, which would be a really bad thing. Think what happened with —”

“— Glory,” Buffy finished, deflating, brief flashes of the day when Hell literally started spilling out into the world running through her mind. “Yeah, that would be all kinds of bad.”

“Right,” Willow responded. Her shoes stopped clicking on the ground as she turned out to survey the vista, apparently in deep thought. “But that _also_ begs the question, how did those pulses manage to find their way into our own world without causing something more major than storms and aurora...?”

She looked at Buffy. The Slayer threw her hands up in the air, shaking her head. “Hey, don’t look at me! I’m not the one with the two-inch stack of comp sci and chem degrees from Harvard.”

“I don’t have any degrees from Harvard,” Willow said, still very obviously distracted. “I went to Carnegie-Melon for computer science —”

“You know what I mean. Universities for ultra-smarticles like you.”

Willow sighed and sat down heavily again, her knees folding out from under her. “I’d go down there to investigate, but my muscles feel like they’ve all melted together into big piles of goop. I...think I need to rest a bit.” She looked forlornly at the Slayer. “The pacing didn’t help any.”

“See? Told you we should’ve followed the people. Though I’m not that sure if they’re nice people anymore.” Buffy gave it a moment’s thought and then shrugged. “Oh well.”

She got a strange look from Willow at that. “Why can’t they be nice people?”

“Anything that glows weird colors when they touch something else is never good, and those rocks? The ones that were in the trunks? They were glowing weird colors when the passed through the...blue portal.”

“That’s odd.” Willow frowned at their surroundings, scooping up a handful of turquoise and purple rocks again. “They just feel like regular rocks. No magical signature or...even anything remotely witchy comin’ off of them.”

“No offense to said witchy skills, but you said you couldn’t get a good read on this place before,” Buffy reminded her. She peered at the pebbles herself, although they looked just as unremarkable as Willow said they were. Not that she was an expert on them or anything, though. “Maybe that’s interfering with anything that could be sensed, coming off of those rocks.”

Willow’s eyebrows furrowed into an irritated line as she considered that. Tossing the rocks aside with a sigh, she leaned back, shoulders hunched up to the lobes of her ears. “I hate not knowing things.”

“I know.” Buffy smiled gently and wrapped a comforting arm around the dejected redhead. “You’ll figure it out, Will, and you’ll figure out how to get us back home. You always do.”

“Right,” the witch muttered, forcing a grin. She rolled her eyes. “Like how I figured out how to bring ya back from the dead before proceeding to mess up everything I touched, huh?”

Buffy pursed her lips. “C’mon, Will. You’re not vampy and you’re not dark now, are you? I thought that we went over this.”

Willow shot a quick glance at her expression and then sighed, letting the tension in her shoulders dissipate. She hung her head, her gaze affixed solely on her clasped hands. “I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to bring that up. That was kinda tactless of me, huh?”

“Just a little bit,” Buffy said with a small smile. “But that’s all behind us now.”

“Wait. Wait. No, it isn’t.” Willow turned on her, a strange expression having descended over her face. “Look, we never really talked about the ramifications of me...y’know...f-flaying — flaying _him.”_

Buffy’s arm froze around Willow’s shoulders. “...If you don’t mind me asking, why are you bringing this up now?”

“It’s just — with this spell and everything. It went wrong. I should’ve known that teleporting into that space would have made my magic all screwy. And now we’re in a land of weird animals and plants and those two portal thingies and glowing rocks and I just don’t _understand_ any of it and I’ve worked my entire life to understand things and this is the first time in ages one of my spells has messed up because of my own stupidity —”

“Hey.” Buffy planted her hands firmly on Willow’s shoulders again. “You’re not stupid and _we’ll get out of this._ As for the whole magic thing, we talked about that already, and we’re over it. I already told you, no hard feelings. You went to England to do that witchy rehab thing. And, alright, you didn’t finish it, but it’s not like you went all dark again and tried to annihilate the world. You’ve kept a really tight rein on your powers ever since then; no one’s had any complaints. That’s practically ancient history. Okay?”

Willow still looked unconvinced, but she slowly nodded. “...Yeah. Thanks.”

“Hey. We haven’t had any Scooby bonding time between the just two of us in a while.” Buffy shrugged and looked out past the lip of the cliff again. “Who knows? This could just be the PTB’s way of telling us that we’re due for some long-overdue time being two of the core Scooby members, kicking monster butt and saving the world.”

Willow quirked a smile. “What, so this is all just like a reprise?”

“You got it.”

"Oh. Well, I can't say I particularly miss our high school days when every other week there was a creature of the demon-y variety trying to kill us all through the power of the Internet."

They sat in content silence for a while longer, with Willow playing semiconsciously with the pebbles on the ground and Buffy observing the two portals and the tree. There was still that lingering feeling she’d sensed from earlier, the one that spoke of raw and unimaginable power. She couldn’t begin to imagine why, but it must have had something to do with this place — after all, there _were_ two mystical portals in full view right in front of her and that gnarled tree. The tree had to be important if it was smack dab in the center of the two portals, right?

“Will?”

“Hmm?”

“I think that if we wanna start finding out what happened with that energy surge you picked up, we should start heading down to that place with the portals and the tree. The place just feels really powerful.”

“This entire place feels really weird,” Willow agreed. She pulled herself to her feet. “Like there’s this constant hum on my skin, but...” She sighed. “Do you think it’s worth risking using magic right now? Or should we try to find a shorter way down?”

They were on the top of a ravine with no foreseeable path downward, other than the path they’d come in from.

“I think we’ll risk the magic,” Buffy decided. “We’re already here. What’s the worse it can do? Explode in our faces?”

“Well, it could turn us into flying pigs,” Willow suggested, but she extended a tentative hand. “...Or talking mushrooms.”

“I trust you.” Buffy smiled, and she took the proffered limb.

Willow took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.”

No sooner than she had closed her eyes did Buffy felt a sharp tugging sensation. She screamed as they suddenly lurched forward at what had to be subsonic speeds, Willow’s hand almost wrenching her arm out of her socket. The wind ripped at every square inch of exposed skin, like it was trying to tear off all the flesh from her bones, but no sooner had it started than they halted and were standing in front of the old tree.

Struggling to regain her sense of balance, her ears ringing uncomfortably, Buffy staggered to the side and had to lean heavily against the bark of the tree to stay upright. Next to her, Willow spun around in several wild circles before she collapsed on her back. Buffy swore she could see her eyes spinning in her sockets.

“A-Alright,” she gasped after regaining the use of her legs. She stumbled to Willow’s side, slinging an arm over her shoulders before helping the witch up. “Never mind. No more magic.”

“Th-That wasn’t magic,” Willow slurred, her gaze still a little unfocused. “I...barely even began th-the incantation — I just got up to the part about how far we were supposed to go —” She hesitated, and then shook her head. She was chalk white. “Um. Oh goddess. Too much thinking.” She sagged against Buffy. “I...I-I’m gonna be sick. Maybe.”

“We traveled like a couple of miles in a fraction of a second,” Buffy wheezed, feeling her stomach roll around itself. “I totally get you right now.”

They were silent for a moment.

“This world,” Willow managed to get out, “is weird.”

Buffy’s head lolled to the side as she caught the witch’s gaze.

_“Talking. Mushrooms.”_

 

It took them another fifteen minutes or so (or maybe it was more; Buffy’s sense of time was pretty off-kilter) to fully shake the effects of whatever Willow had done. She was still claiming it wasn’t magic, and Buffy was inclined to believe her. They’d both gone through some pretty weird things already in this place, and Buffy wasn’t about to rule out something other than magic causing the impromptu speed-of-light ride.

They had ventured to the front of the tree by this point and were standing next to each other, trying to figure out what in a world a gigantic  _hole_ in the center of said tree was doing there. It looked like a giant had taken a spoon to the wood and scooped out a huge chunk of the poor thing.

"You know, I don't think that trees can survive that long with such a gigantic hole like that in them," Buffy observed weakly. Turning to Willow: "Whaddya think?"

"I don't think that  _normal_ trees can survive that long," Willow said slowly. "And, uh, I think that we've already clarified that this place? Not exactly the most normal." She edged closer to the tree, trying to peer at the interior of the gap without actually touching anything. "Hey, the floor is kinda like...level down there. Looks like around four people or so can fit...fit inside...it..."

She suddenly trailed off, becoming transfixed by the interior of the tree. She almost looked like she wasn't even breathing.

"Willow?" Buffy rushed to her friend's side, concerned. "Willow?"

No answer.

"Willow? What's going on?"

No answer.

_"Willow?!"_

Buffy turned toward the tree herself.

And almost had a heart attack, because she was positive that the last time she looked into it, there were absolutely no ghostly images of her best friend inside whatsoever. No wonder Willow was staring. _  
_

_"— and we're like, the Slayerettes —"_

_"— sell me on the world? The one where you...lie to your friends when you're not trying to —"_

_"— I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit! —"_

_"— where you're needed. Are you coming? —"_

_"— it's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in —"_

Buffy shook her head, trying to clear her mind of what were clearly Willow's memories. Somehow, the tree was replaying them inside of that obscenely large gap, and if Buffy had been in Willow's position, she'd probably be somewhat catatonic, too.

"Will, look at me." Buffy shook her shoulders and stepped in front of the redhead's line of sight. "Snap out of it."

"H-Huh?" Willow's eyes were still glazed, but she seemed to register the Slayer this time. "Buff — Buffy?"

She sighed. "I'm here. Are you okay?"

Understandably, Willow still looked a little freaked out. "Wh-What  _was_ that?! I saw — I saw —"

“I don't know. But I think that we have really got to start figuring this place out —” Buffy started to say, before she was interrupted.

“— 来了,” a voice suddenly rang throughout the clearing.

From beside her, Willow let out a strangled noise that sounded like it was caught between a scream and a squeak. Buffy whipped around, her arms immediately settling into a fighting position as she warily scanned the area for the source of the voice.

Turns out, she was standing right in front of it.


	3. Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Archive Warnings" label has been changed. There is graphic violence, blood, and what could be considered as torture in the last scene. If it makes you uncomfortable, don't read it.

**Division I: Spirits**

**Part 3**

[ **Encounter** ]

* * *

 There were two of them, both women, and Buffy could have sworn that they hadn’t been there a second ago. They both had shocked expressions on their faces, like they weren’t expecting company. (Although, they probably weren’t; she and Willow had just arrived here themselves, after all.) One of them was taller than the other.

The shorter woman, garbed in some kind of skintight blue vest and baggy pants that showed off her surprisingly muscled arms, recovered first. She immediately took a threatening step forward to confront Buffy, her blue eyes glimmering with mistrust.

“你是誰? 為什麼你在這裡?” she demanded, and in the _same_ language the mushroom had used. Buffy thought that she might’ve fainted if not for the adrenaline coursing through her body, keeping her on high alert. Despite the language barrier, there was no mistaking the suspicion in the woman’s voice. And there was also something about this woman that screamed of power and authority. It showed in the way she held herself, the way she had moved forward to intercept the perceived threat. It was something that Buffy had seen many times in herself. She had no doubt that this woman was a skilled fighter, with her posture speaking to how she was ready shift into an offensive stance with the blink of an eye.

Buffy cautiously relaxed, lowering her arms and looking at the woman in the eye. She held her hands up in the air in what she hoped was the universal term for surrender, and not a sign that she wanted to attack.

“We’re not here to fight you,” she said slowly, although she doubted that this woman could understand her any more than Buffy could understand her. She pointed to herself and then shook her head, trying to convey what she meant.

“Buffy,” Willow whispered, walking up next to her. “I think that they’re speaking in Mandarin.”

“What?” Buffy whispered back, tilting her head, although she didn’t take her eyes off of the woman. “Mandarin, as in Chinese? Why didn’t you say so earlier when the mushroom talked?”

“哎!” the woman shouted, taking another step forward. “你们在收什么?!”

“I didn’t know those words!” Willow said, obviously flustered. “I-I spent a little time in China before, so I know how to say ‘hello’ and ‘my name is’ and ‘I want to eat noodles’ and like one or two more phrases, and that’s about it!”

The blue-clothed woman was obviously getting frustrated now, and her companion had caught up to her. She had East Asian features, though whether they were Chinese or Japanese or Korean, Buffy had no idea. And as far as she knew, no East Asian had green eyes like this woman did. The green-eyed lady said something to her friend, who shot another suspicious look at Buffy and then shook her head.

“Let me handle this,” Willow murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder. “At least saying ‘hi’ or something.”

She stepped up to the two women, her hands raised in a placating manner like Buffy was doing before. They immediately stopped talking, regarding the redhead with suspicion. Willow hesitated but then tilted her chin up, meeting the blue-eyed woman’s fierce gaze head-on and then said in what Buffy assumed was _very_ broken Mandarin, “Uh...你...好.”

They stiffened and shot furtive, brief glances at each other. The green-eyed woman spoke up this time. Her voice was more melodic than her friend’s, and it seemed friendlier, although her posture still screamed of suspicion.

“你知道四国语?” she asked.

“Uh, I don’t really know what you’re saying,” Willow stammered, and then clapped a hand to her forehead. “I mean — I don’t...我不...know — um, I'm not really sure how to say that — Chinese...中文...uh...that well...好.”

They looked at each other before the green-eyed woman asked in confusion, “‘中文’? 我们不说中文. 我们收的是四国语, 但是...我们可以—”

Buffy groaned, intervening. “This is never going to work. Will, can you do a translation spell?”

She looked startled. “Um, Buffy? Spells are what got us here in the first place.”

“I-I know, but it's just a translation spell, right?

"Um..." Willow looked thoroughly unconvinced.

"we can’t — if this is what all the people and mushrooms here speak, we’ll never be able to understand them, and we’ll never be able to find out what this place is all about. And _then_ we’ll never be able to get back to our world, and that’d be super bad. You know how horrible I am with languages, and you can’t learn Mandarin in a day. Or, or even a week! It’s supposed to be one of the hardest to learn, right?”

She still looked doubtful, but nodded. “I can try.” Pointing a stiff finger at the Slayer, "But don't blame me if you grow an extra mouth on an unmentionable body part."

"..." Buffy turned and gave her brightest smile to the two women, who seemed rather unimpressed by it. “Hang on just a sec, will ya?” She deliberated telling them that Willow was just doing a spell and whatnot, and they meant no harm, but decided to save her breath in the end and instead try to reassure them with enthusiastic miming.

Willow chanted a few words under her breath. A couple of strands of ethereal white shot through her hair before they faded, receding back into its original dusky red. She looked up hopefully and then asked, “Can you understand me now?” Then, underneath her breath, “Please tell me I haven’t accidentally converted my words into frog croaks.”

If possible, the two women looked even more taken aback, looking at each other again. Then, the blue-eyed woman nodded slowly and stepped forward, a hand planted on her right hip as she suspiciously regarded the two of them.

“Right,” she said in a surprisingly Americanized accent. Buffy supposed that it was a side effect of the translation spell. “Who are you people and how did you get in here?”

Not “what are you doing here,” but _how._ Buffy’s eyebrows rose into her hairline at the surprising choice of words, and judging by Willow’s expression, she’d noted it as well.

“You know where we’re from?” Buffy asked, narrowing her eyes.

“No, but you have...really weird hair,” the woman bluntly said. “Why is it yellow?”

Buffy pouted. “It’s not _yellow,_ it’s _blonde.”_

“...Gold isn’t that different from yellow.”

“I don’t think that ‘blonde’ translates properly,” Willow offered.

The woman looked unconvinced, but she let the subject drop. Clearly, there were more pressing matters on her mind. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Buffy.”

The two women exchanged a look before the green-eyed one piped up, a smile quirking at the edge of her painted lips. “I’m sorry. But... _‘Buffy’?”_

“Hey! I have a perfectly fine name, thank you very much!” Buffy folded her arms, a little bit peeved that even in a world completely separate from her own, her name was still a source of humor.

“Uh — I’m Willow,” and said redhead interjected quickly, stepping forward. “Like the tree. You, um, you guys have willow trees...right? Non-talky willow trees?”

“...We do,” the woman confirmed, although she seemed a little confused by Willow’s choice of words. Exchanging another glance with her companion, she said kindly, “I’m Asami, and this is Korra.”

“You interrupted our vacation,” Korra added, rather unhelpfully. Asami seemed to realize this, shooting the blue-eyed woman a look.

“We didn’t mean to. Trust me,” Buffy sighed. “We want to be here about as much as you want us here.”

“Yeah, and...we were wondering if you could answer a few questions,” Willow said. “Do you live here?”

Korra looked at her like she was mad. “Umm...well, this is called the Spirit World for a reason, you know.”

“The _what_ now?” Buffy frowned. “‘Spirit World’?”

“Yeah. It’s the world where the spirits live,” Korra said. Buffy frowned, but Korra didn't sound like she was trying to insult her intelligence. The blue-eyed woman waved a hand idly at one of the two portals, then at herself and Asami. “We live in the Material World. Those portals over there and there lead to it. You exit through the Northern Portal through the red one and the Southern Portal through the blue. There’s, uh...another, newer portal that leads to Republic City, but that’s a bit further away from here.” She smiled sheepishly. "That might've been my fault."

“Republic City? Hang on.” Buffy shook her head. “Where _are_ we? I mean, what’s this entire place called? Both these...Spirit and Material Worlds, I mean.”

Asami looked like she was actually pondering the question. “Well, as far as I know, the Four Nations make up the Material World, and the Spirit World’s just...” She looked at Korra. “...Just the Spirit World, I guess.” She shrugged. “I’m not too sure myself. I’m not that much of a spiritual person —”

“Waitwaitwait! Are they in the same universe?” Willow jumped in. She looked almost painfully excited. “Or just on the same existential plane? Are they mirror dimensions? ’Cause if they aren’t, I’d really like to know how the boundaries between this Spirit World and your Material World aren’t collapsing around those two portals, because jeez, if that happened in our world, there’d probably be all kinds of nasty demon-y things falling out of the sky. It’s happened before, with this hell god called Gl —”

“Whoa, hang on! Slow down!” Korra shook her head and then stared at Willow. _“What_ are you even talking about?"

“...You don’t know about alternate universes?” Willow looked absolutely crushed, like someone had eaten the last square of her Cadbury chocolate bar without two weeks’ advance notice.

“Nope. Can’t say I do.” Korra turned to Asami and smiled. If Buffy didn’t know any better, she’d say that the blue-eyed woman looked positively proud. “She’s the scientist here. Do you know about, er, alternate universes?”

“I’m an engineer, Korra,” Asami pointed out, although she didn’t sound accusatory at all. "Not  _quite_ into the whole...alternate universe thing."

“Oh. Well,” Korra mumbled, suddenly turning a bright shade of red. “I kinda, you know...just assumed. Because science.”

Asami made a light coughing sound that may have been a cover-up for a giggle.

Willow looked at Korra, and then Asami, and then back to Korra again.

And then she broke out into a broad, Willow-patented smile. “Hey, wait a sec...are you two involved?”

Korra’s jaw dropped open almost comically wide while Asami just looked...well, stunned.

Buffy, for her part, nearly had a coronary. If she was a stuffy English Watcher, she’d probably be furiously polishing her glasses right about now to the point where she accidentally shattered the glass with the sheer force of her rubbing. _“Willow!”_ she spluttered. “You don’t just go up to people five minutes after you’ve met them and ask if they’re dating!”

“Um?” was all Korra managed to get out, before she shook her head. “Hang on a moment —"

“Hey!" Willow looked at Buffy indignantly. Don’t doubt my gaydar abilities; I was with Kennedy for a year and a half."

"— I, I didn't say that we were —"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "And that's supposed to mean something?"

"—  _involved_ or anything, a-and —"

"Yes!" Willow nodded furiously, oblivious to a spluttering Korra. Asami, on the other hand, was looking between all of them like they were insane. "Kennedy had the best sexdar abilities of anyone I've known."

"— you're not even listening to me, are you?"

"A-And anyway, I think that they’re really cute together! And it’s not as if I’m not all for the lady lovin’!” She smiled brightly at Korra and Asami. “I know we’ve just met, but you two seem really nice and I support you guys one hundred percent.”

"Do you even breathe?" Korra asked again.

 _“Sexdar?”_ Buffy was still hung up on that. “Did you honestly just say ‘sexdar’?”

“Hey, lay off!" Willow frowned. "I don’t insult your radio-wave puns!”

"Just —" Buffy sighed and then turned to Korra. "I-I've got a question. About, er, before. You asked us 'how' we got in here, rather than 'what' we were doing here. Why?"

Korra hesitated and exchanged a look with Asami before the green-eyed woman turned back, crossing her arms. "Well, it's just...it's just that people don't randomly enter the Spirit World. There are shifts of guards stationed at both the Northern and Southern Portals to prevent anyone from just walking in, and a police perimeter's been set up around the Republic City Portal."

Buffy frowned. "But we — me and Willow, I'm saying — just saw a bunch of people with these antique-like tracks at the base of the mountains over there maybe half an hour ago. They were, uh, they were collecting...rocks? Anyway, they were collecting those rocks, and piling them in the back of their trucks like there was no tomorrow, and then they just all plowed through the reddish portal. The, uh, Northern Portal," she hastily corrected.

"They were kinda sketchy-lookin'," Willow offered helpfully. "But if you want me to be optimistic, they were possibly going to use them for arts and crafts rather than a horrifyingly nefarious purpose?"

Korra blinked. "...I'm sorry, but what?"

"Korra..." Buffy took note of Asami's concerned expression.

"There were people with old trucks and they were making off with rocks from colorful mountains," Buffy supplanted, and then grimaced. "...Alright, that sounded a lot better in my head."

But then, Korra shook her head and repeated:

_"What?!"_

—

The man appeared not two minutes after midnight, clad in a billowing black overcoat. A small, well-worn leather briefcase was clutched between his gloved fingers.

The stars shone above him in the inky sky, their cold fire still burning brightly even from thousands of light-years away. He strode briskly beneath them, the ends of his coat snapping in the tailwind, not quite unlike what walls of shifting black shadows might look like.

He stopped on his meandering path a total of three times: once, by a late-night commuter who slowed down her Satomobile to ask, as any kind civilian might do, what he was doing out on the streets so late at night; the second by a stray, mangy-pelted cat-owl with an equally scrawny mouse clamped firmly in between its claws; the third, he halted himself, at the intersection of two roads. The man ducked into a small alleyway between a dollar store and a derelict bar, where a barely-visible wooden sign hanging precariously on its place on the window bore the words  _Moon Flower._ Mumbling several words under his breath, he cast a glamor, allowing his figure to shimmer out of existence.

The rough woolen overcoat chafed against his skin, uncomfortably hot. It trapped in the sticky humidity of what was turning out to be an unnaturally hot night in Republic City. The coat would've been suitable for the weather he was used to, up in the high northern mountains that surrounded the city, but not for now. Nevertheless, he hunkered down in silence and pushed ruthlessly against his discomfort, settling down into a crouch.

The streetlights above continued to bathe the sidewalks in cold white, shining down upon nothing but empty stretches of concrete and road and the occasional stray. It was the still picture of a slumbering city that, for once, was completely and totally asleep. It almost seemed like a dark omen of what was to come.

Two minutes and fifty-five seconds later, the man shifted from his position, taking a quick glance at his watch before he edged out of his place in the alley to better see the two sidewalk lengths beyond. There was another few moments of mundane inactivity; then, twin strobe lights pierce through the darkness to the right and a dark Satomobile rounded the bend. Following the car was a dark blob of shifting beings, ambling down the concrete pathways, turning the bend perhaps a hundred feet away and quickly approaching the man and his hiding place.

The man straightened to his feet, brushing off some gravel clinging onto the cloth, before edging deeper into his alleyway despite his glamor. Twin purple eyes fixated on the approaching cluster of people — _one, two, three, four, five, six_ in total, he quickly head-counted. And no doubt more inside the vehicle on the way, carrying the items he needed.

And he should know, for he had been the one to initially give it to them in the first place. Though it is clear to him now, that after approximately four months, two weeks, and five days of careful observation and distant experimentation, Trial C3.006 had dug itself into a hole that it would not be able to climb out of, and after the rather disappointing results — well, he was only reclaiming his materials. Harvesting several others, if you would, and taking what was rightfully his.

As the Satomobile and group of people draw closer, his ears began to pick up the steady murmur of conversation. They were only snatches of words and phrases not yet molded into comprehensible sentences, but he thought he could essentially figure out what each of them were saying through context.

"...last shipment...came late..."

"...just jack up the fucking prices, Kenji, we'll win both ways..."

"...wha' the fuck, why's the bread so soggy?"

"...another guy went insane...months of this..."

"...gotta be careful; don't want the Avatar comin' down on us..."

_"...fuckin' hell, Jin, this's a really shit sandwich, wha' the fuck did ya even put in it —"_

"...dunno if this fucking blue lightning's worth it anymore...so many guys went to Otter Falls Sector already..."

After this last statement, a resounding  _CRACK_  echoed throughout the still night air. Both the black car and the cluster of young adults abruptly halted, and one of the figures on the sidewalk staggered rather ungracefully to the left before slumping in apparent agony against the polished stone wall of a skyscraper, clutching the right side of his head with his hands.

"Shut up, Jin," came another voice, one that the man hadn't heard before, but whose gruff timbre was imbued with the evident authoritativeness of leadership. "I won't have any of your useless pessimism tonight."

The other man — the one who had been struck in the face, now roughly sweeping the back of his hand across his bloody cheeks — made a noise of petulant discontent, his voice splintering with anger.

"It's true," came the low retort. "More and more of our brothers are turning crazy, rather than gaining bending. We've sent almost twelve to Otter Falls alone in the past month. And even the ones who  _do_  successfully acquire it are beginning to act really  _weird._  Boulder's been complaining about losing control, too. Don't you see, Naka? Maybe it isn't the best idea to keep pursuing this...blue lightning."

"Bah," the leader spits, then roughly gestured toward the car. "We've waited long enough for this shipment to arrive, and I'm sure as fuck not turning down the opportunity to make a gigantic fucking profit. Spirits know we need the yuans."

"We can find other ways to get the fuckin' yuans," Jin muttered, seizing the right sleeve of his jacket and yanking it closer to his body. "I'm just sayin', boss, I don't know if all this blue lightnin' in the end'll be worth all the trouble it's been causin'."

Naka's low snarl ripples through the air a second before he leaped forward, his fist smashing into Jin's face. A sickening  _crack_  echoed throughout the night air as bone crunched underneath bone. The man silently watched on as Jin immediately keeled to his knees, his nose spurting out a fountain of blood. He pressed his hands to the bleeding appendage, gasping thickly through his fingers. Crimson splatters bloomed slowly on the dirty concrete ground, slipping through the cracks of Jin's fingers.

"Oi! The fug was dat for?!" he slurred through the mess Naka's fist had made of his face. Even from his alleyway, the man in the overcoat could see Jin's right cheek already beginning to swell, a brilliantly black and blue bruise blossoming across the entire side of his face.

"You don't understand," Naka scoffed, turning away on a scuffed heel from the cursing man sprawled across the ground. "You don't understand the raw  _potential_  this blue lightning holds. You don't understand how it could transform us from some backwater operation no one's every fucking heard of before, into one that can make us into a syndicate known by everyone in this fucking city! And if that means that some of our brothers will go loony in the head and be shipped off to fucking Otter Falls, fine." He shook his head. "You can't progress in this world without making some sacrifices, you little shit. There was a guy I once knew who said that you've gotta give some to get some. That's true of everything. Now  _get up."_

Jin's face twisted into something furious for a moment, his gaze blackening even as his hands clamped ever the tighter over his gushing nose. But then, after Naka met his glare with an equal amount of hostility, he bowed his head and silently followed the older man through the streets once more, this time without any complaint.

The air was still rife with tension, with Jin glancing over resentfully at Naka, the mob leader himself brushing his subordinate off before proceeding down the street, his boots clomping loudly on the ground. The rest of his men and the Satomobile followed him like a herd of lost moo-sow, ambling mindlessly behind their leader.

They approached closer and closer to where the man had been hiding, shrouded in the glamor and the shadows of the night. When they came within range, the man dropped his glamor and stepped out into the night air, his overcoat flapping behind him in the momentary breeze that had been created.

—

The man appeared as silently as a shadow detaching itself from a pool of darkness.

There had been no person standing in his way before Naka blinked; a moment later, the man stood in front of him, not ten feet away, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. A pair of glowing purple eyes pierced through the darkness as if they were searchlights.

Behind him, his men startled backwards, the sound of knives and shotguns withdrawn from holsters rattling through the air. The benders readied their respective elements. Naka could hear Kenji take a step closer to him, his own firearm cocked and ready to fire.

Naka, for his part, stays put and glared at the mysterious man.

"Who are you?!"

Being the leader of a drug cartel — one of the smaller ones, granted, but a cartel none the less — he had long since learned the value of always keeping up his guard, never trusting his back to be left unattended while he attended to his front. Taking part in the criminal underground of Republic City, run by the three main Terror Triads, was a dangerous profession by itself, never mind if one was in the middle of transporting incredibly valuable (and illegal) substances.

The man, however, did not flinch away from Naka's commanding tone. He simply stood as still as a statue in the middle of the road. His stance was still relaxed, despite the fact that Naka's exclamation had insinuated that if the man didn't back down, he was going to be  _made_  to back down, with the threat of ten bullets threatening to puncture through his chest.

And this was what bothered Naka the most about this man. Not even those supernatural purple eyes, not the overcoat he was wearing, darker than the darkest shadows in the night.

The man was  _smiling,_  the barest upturn of pale lips set upon his face, easy and unconcerned. As if  _he_  was threatening Naka back.

 _Try me,_  his smile challenged.

He showed no indication of backing down, and Naka could feel the irritation and impatience within him bloom into something impulsive and lethal.

"Kill him," Naka snapped. The words were imbued with finality, and Naka turned on his heel.

Which meant that he didn't see the man's lips curve up into another smile, a wide smile. Real and unreal at the same time, all teeth and no warmth. Only the cold bite of winter nipping behind its heels, glaring stark and white.

Naka also didn't hear the crack of bullets being ripped from their clips to be fired off at over a hundred mile per hour speeds. Didn't smell the acidic, metallic tang of gunpowder. Didn't hear any water, or fire or rocks being thrown.

(Though this was probably due to the fact, and he realized too late, that the projectiles were never released.)

But he did hear the shattering of glass as a figure — no, several figures in black camouflage swooped down (from nowhere,  _again_ , where the fuck were all these guys coming from?!), one of them smashing something through the window of the car carrying the blue lightning. A muffled shriek rang out through the air, the sound muted by what must have been a rough hand clamped over a mouth, before another shadow broke into the trunk of the car. It whipped out both silver safes that had been riding in the back.

Naka began to let loose an angered roar. His hand reached for his own gun, which was nestled safely within his holster, before he felt the iron arm slip around his neck. It was pressing down with just enough pressure that he was suddenly flailing through the air like some hopeless rag doll, arms and legs thrashing violently and fingers scraping down pale skin that had to be made of steel because his ragged, dirty nails weren't breaking through it.

"Wha — ?" he managed to choke out, fingers still scratching fruitlessly down on the arm that was trapping him in a literal death stranglehold. "What are you doing — who —"

"It is just a little reminder to show you that you are not in control here." The man's voice was pleasant and calm; friendly, almost, deceptively covering the fact that he may or may not be a psychotic madman. "I suggest that you not struggle against my men. It will hurt far less that way."

Naka only struggled harder, and the arm only tightened around his neck, iron bars squeezing all the air out of his lungs. Another arm snaked to his chest and began to push the remaining air straight out his chest. The grizzled cartel leader wheezed in desperation, his movements growing slower and weaker by the second, arms weighing down like great, heavy leaden bars with oxygen deprivation and lethargy. A burst of red materialized in the corner of his vision, and Naka gasped as a dagger of flame was lowered to his neck.

_"What — are you doing — why are you here —"_

"I am in the process of creating a better world," the man replied calmly, slipping his black messenger bag off from his shoulder with barely a whisper of cloth. Yet his violet eyes never left the shocked gazes of the gang members in front of him, boring into their hearts, boring into their souls. "And...well, you — all of you — have the honor to become a part of that process. Part of the bigger picture. What more could you all ask for?"

A glass jar and a long, sharp knife that winked wickedly underneath the suddenly sinister glow of the streetlights were all that he pulled from his bag.

"Wha —  _what the fuck do you think you're doing?!"_  Naka roared, straining against his captor. He dimly noted that his comrades were attempting to do the same.

The woman — one of the soldiers, dressed in black camouflage and an expression swiped clean of any and all emotion — holding him was slight, yet stood immovable against the thrashing two-hundred-plus pound man as if she was holding a stuffed animal,.

The man dressed in the black overcoat didn't react but for a mere twitch of his lips, purple eyes glittering coldly underneath the distant light of the stars and the moon. The soft  _thump, thump_  of his boots resounded almost like cannon blasts to Naka's terrified ears. The man then descended upon him, the razor-sharp knife held loosely in his grip.

A pair of hands, surprisingly gentle, came to rest on the planes of Naka's face, currently twisted with fear and fury. Mixed together, they formed a cocktail of pure terror.

"I want you to know that this is not an attack," the man softly said, the quiet nuances in his voice expressing confidence and sureness. Every movement and word was deliberate. "And this will hurt you, but it will also save  _you._  The human race."

"Wha' the fuckin' 'ell are you goin' on about, ya madman?" Naka heard Kenji choke out. There came a gurgle, and Kenji sagged heavily against his own captor, bubbles of spit erupting from his gaping mouth as an arm closed around his neck, cutting off his air supply.

"The next person who speaks back to me in such a manner will receive a much harsher treatment than your friend has there," the man said delicately even as Kenji's eyes rolled back into his head, his face blotched with ugly patches of purple and blue.

Naka grunted and strained even harder against his captor. His muscles bunched into tense knots and bullets of sweat erupted across his forehead. Fists clenching, he bared his teeth toward the man in a futile display of force. The man only laughed it off, his hands slipping away from the gang leader's face. He reached toward the glass jar glinting near the ground and unscrewed the lid before placing it back down.

"Everyone is going to die," he said conversationally, turning back to Naka. "I assume that my saying so is not a surprise. I will also say once more, to let you know that you dying right here, right now, is an honor. Because you were going to die anyway, but it would have been quite... _meaningless_  in any other circumstance. But this way, you can be a part of the new beginning. The new life that will replace the old. Fresh flesh and blood to replace the festering sores. But all things said...excuse me, there will be a little sting here."

The man turned sharply and flicked his fingers toward the soldier holding Naka down. The soldier curled her left arm across Naka's chest and clamped her hand over the grizzled man's mouth before dragging him toward the wall, pressing the struggling man's right hand flat against the grimy wall of the interior alleyway. Then she spread his fingers rigid and tight.

And then the knife was suddenly at his hand, slicing down quickly and chopping off his middle finger. And then all Naka could do was scream and scream and scream — pain burning through him like a searing river of concentrated acid, spittle spraying the palm of the soldier's hand. His vision spotted with bursting firecrackers colored blinding white and red. Through a blur of tears, he saw the man in the overcoat drop the finger inside the glass jar, all calm and unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world, before he set to work on another.

"There  _was_ a plan, you know, for everyone to survive."

_Chop._

Another finger.

"Not just survive, but  _prosper_...no racism...no prejudices...no boundaries."

_Chop._

And another.

"It wouldn't have been hard, either...but that plan is now scrapped, no thanks to the likes of you. And so, we are left... _here."_

_Chop._

And yet another.

The man's voice remained so frighteningly calm the entire while, as if he was simply talking to an inanimate object while cheerfully hacking its limbs off.

He took and took and took until Naka was left gasping in tears with two quivering, fingerless mutilations of what used to be his hands, bleeding thick rivulets of blood from the stumps, staining his skin a gaudy red. Two gauntlets of shining blood, running jagged as the droplets slowed. The leaked down his wrists: tears of crimson, short-lived and ephemeral in their life, fit only for a dying man.

"Now," the man continued, as soft and calm as ever — yet, the tone did not reach his eyes, which were as hard as chips of ice. Still brandishing his knife, "This is the part that is going to hurt the most. Biologically speaking, of course. I am sorry to inform you that I do not know if it will cause any more pain than the fingers did, but it will almost certainly cause more damage, I am afraid. This is the part that you will not have the fortune to live through, is what I mean to say." He held up the glass jar and shook it gently, rattling the fleshy fingers at the bottom. "I will need to fill the rest of this jar with your blood."

Naka's voice returned to him just in time for a piercing scream.


End file.
